Culture in english language learing and teaching
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Date
2007
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Oum-El-Bouaghi university
Abstract
Since ancient times, research showed a close and reciprocal relationship between language and culture. In which culture is a complicated concept refers to characteristics shared by a given society and distinguish it from others, these characteristics include the material aspects- the artecrafts, arts, culinary practices, and traditional dress and clothing of the community; and the ideological and social aspects- knowledge, meanings, thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, views, values, and attitudes.
This relationship between language and culture is very clear in many aspects. In the systematic relationship between the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it or what is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a reciprocal relationship in which language shapes and in turn shaped by culture and thought exists.
The cultural reality is reflected in the vocabulary of the language, and in borrowing new vocabulary items from another language is due to the acquisition of new cultural items and concepts from other societies where the language is spoken, so the development of language and culture takes place in correspondence.
As a final contention, language is a reflector and a symbol of culture, and an integral part of it. So that, language and culture can not be separated or treated apart from each other, since language can not be conceived without culture, and linguistic practice is always embedded in some cultural context or another. Then, it is evident that language learning can not take place without culture learning, because in learning the mother language, the cultural aspects and the linguistic system are developed concurrently, and when learning a foreign language, learners rely on their cultural aspects when developing the linguistic system, i.e., their native culture and their ignorance of the foreign culture will influence the learning proficiency.
In oral learning and conversations, the variability of the social and cultural patterns may lead to breakdown conversation, so successful conversation requires an understanding and interpretation of the context and culture of the language for an appropriate response to its expectations.
Cultural and social aspects play a major role in listening comprehension as well as reading comprehension, as far as the problems of listening and reading comprehension are very similar.
Learners, to derive the correct message from culture-specific expressions, they need more than the linguistic competence- grammar and vocabulary; but also the cultural competence- knowledge about the foreign culture. In dealing with implicatures for instance, people from different cultural background infer different messages from the same utterance in the same context. Implicatures can only be a successful conversational strategy if the interlocutors share the literal meaning of the utterance in question and aspects of world around them.
Culture also influence writing in the foreign language, the rhetorical organization of text and its progress are often determined by the thought of members of a particular culture. The structure of written text and rhetorical paradigms are based on cultural frameworks derived from different stylistic, religious, ethnic, and social notions. What represents a logical development and well construction of text to communicate the writer's aim related to concepts which are not necessary shared by members of different cultures.
Academic writing in a foreign language are affected by ideologies related to the learners traditions and culture, so that, native like proficiency in writing may not be easily attainable for foreign language learners.
Another issue in the study of the influence of culture and thought in language learning is the semantic transfer or what some researchers such as Byram refer to as cultural transfer, in which learners keep using their native language and culture as a reference point because of the absolute separation of lexical items from their original reference in teaching the foreign language.
The experiment which took place on second year students at the University of Guelma, and the results show clearly the importance of the cultural competence in foreign language learning. The study reports the importance of addressing the associated culture in language learning which facilitate language learning process, and also the importance of working on the learners' cultural awareness, so that can help them in holding positive attitudes towards foreign people and culture, which will create a great motivation for them in learning the foreign culture and consequently improving the language learning. What is needed here is the intercultural competence, which is more than the ability to use the language according to the linguistic and social rules, but rather the adaptability to use accurate and appropriate forms needed in a given social context.
Many researchers such as Kramsh and Byram pointed out that instead of a pedagogy oriented towards the native speaker, then better pedagogy to be oriented towards the intercultural learner and to develop language learners' intercultural communicative competence, in which the learner is learning about their own and others' cultural practices in a mutually reinforcing relationship as well as comparative perspective.
Also the ethnographic approach which provide a detailed description of language behaviour within the community and a deeper understanding of how individuals view and participate into their own social and cultural worlds what add an intercultural dimension in learning a language. The learner here is seen as an ethnographer or as a participant cultural observer and analyst in drawing comparisons and contrasts between their own and the foreign cultures. So that, he becomes aware of himself as a cultural product and of his own society, and prepared to look at and accept the behaviour of people from other cultures, and with the acceptance of the other culture comes the acceptance of the other language. Here, the teacher plays a major role not only as a language teacher but also as a culture teacher, and in this case although their education and training they still need disciplines related to cultural learning too.
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Keywords
Langue (anglais), Enseignement : langue (anglais)